Sustained wind
Definition
- Related pages
- 3
- Last revised
- 23 August 2026
A sustained wind is the wind speed averaged over a fixed interval, a couple of minutes long, at an observing station. It is the figure an hourly observation reports as the wind, the one a forecast means by wind speed, and the one the tropical cyclone scale is built on. A gust is measured inside the same interval and is always equal to or higher than the sustained wind, because it is the highest few seconds of the same minutes.
For a storm the sustained wind understates what happened. Thunderstorm winds arrive in bursts; a downburst that broke limbs for half a minute can average into a sustained figure that looks unremarkable, while the peak gust from the same minutes tells the truth. A station report that gives only a sustained wind is therefore a weaker statement about a storm than one that gives a gust, and a claim that reads a sustained wind as the strongest wind at the station has read the wrong figure. The opposite error also occurs: a gust quoted as though it had blown for an hour.
The product prints both wherever both are on record, labels each, and ranks a day's strongest wind by the greater of the two. An hourly analysis over an address also gives a sustained value and a gust for each hour, and the product qualifies both with the word the document prints beside every value from the analysis grid, because an analysis describes the broad wind field over a grid cell and neither figure was measured at the address.
In the report
How the document prints it
In the report a sustained wind appears in the wind section as its own column beside the gust, hour by hour over the address, each figure a whole number in miles per hour with its direction, qualified as analyzed and introduced by a note that the values come from a gridded hourly analysis and not from an instrument at the property. In the record table a wind report prints one measurement, the gust where the source gave one and the sustained figure otherwise, with its source and the mark that says whether it was measured.
From the record
1 Nov 2026
Which figure set the strongest wind on the most recent severe wind day
- Strongest measured wind
- 60 mph
- Reported as
- Gust
- Severe wind criterion
- 58 mph
- Wind reports on the day
- 13
The strongest measured wind on 1 November 2026 was 60 mph, reported as a gust, against a severe criterion of 58 mph; One independent source carried the day. The record keeps the two figures apart because a gust and a sustained wind from the same minutes are not the same number.
Measured Detected, not measured
The page these figures come fromRelated
The terms this page uses and the guides that go further. Each is shown against its own example from the record.
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Term
Peak gust
The highest wind speed recorded over a brief interval, a few seconds, at a station or by an observer during a storm or a day.
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Term
ASOS
The network of automated weather stations, mostly at airports, that records the official surface observations of wind, temperature and precipitation.
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Guide
Automated weather reports in court: what survives a challenge
Two Florida courts excluded wind figures taken from commercial weather products because nobody could verify how they were made. This guide states what those rulings turned on, what Rule 702 asks of a figure and of the person citing it, what independent corroboration means as a count, and what a report has to say about itself to be cited.
Sources
The primary references. Each opens on the agency's own site.
The glossary defines the word. The report is what uses it.
Everything above is definition: what the word means in the document, and what it does not. None of it says what reached one roof.
Run the address and the archive is searched at the property: the storm, the date, the measured size, the distance and bearing from the roof, and the federal record each figure came from, in a document that states its own method. Ready in minutes.
How this page is made
- The text
- Written by the editors and last revised 23 August 2026. It explains the record and how the report reads it; it contains no figure of its own.
- The example
- Drawn from the archive when the page was compiled, 1 November 2026, and rebuilt daily as the record deepens. Every figure in the panel marked From the record is computed, not written, and links to the page it came from.
- Measured and detected
- A report from a person or an instrument is measured. A radar-derived size is detected, not measured, and is marked as such, here and in every document we issue. The two are never added together.
- What this is not
- A definition of a word the report uses. It is not a report on any property, and it states no opinion about one. The coverage page states what the record holds, by kind and by year.
About this record
Everything here is reproduced from public federal and volunteer weather records, as the agencies and observer networks that publish them released it. Titan Weather compiles the record; it does not observe the weather, and it is not affiliated with any source it cites.
No archive holds everything. Storms cross places where nobody is standing, instruments and observers cover some areas better than others, sources revise their records, and recent reports can take weeks to arrive and settle. Coverage also thins as the years go back: an early quiet stretch may describe who was watching rather than what the weather did. Where this page shows nothing, nothing was found in the sources searched, within the period and area it states. That is not a finding that no weather occurred.
A record sits where its source filed it. Reports made from the ground are commonly logged against a town, a landmark or an offset from one rather than the spot where the measurement was taken, so any distance shown for one carries that source's own location error. Radar detections and warning geometry are instrument-located and do not.
These pages describe the public record near a place or on a date. They do not establish what reached any particular property, and nothing here is insurance, legal or engineering advice.